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Vertigo -- a dizzy, confused, disoriented state
of mind -- is a nearly universal response when looking out over the edge
of a cliff.

But the managers and researchers at labs and universities across the
United States don’t have time for vertigo as they contemplate the brink of the impending “fiscal
cliff.” With 10 days (and a major holiday week) before a deadline that would among
other things substantially reduce federal funding for scientific research, the House
of Representatives has adjourned until after the first of the year, delaying or
eliminating the opportunity for a different resolution.

After the first of the year, more than $500 billion in automatic tax increases
and spending cuts will begin to take effect, threatening to undermine the
sluggish recovery and prompt a new recession, a Washington Post article noted yesterday. (The New York Times provides detailed analysis as well.)
So, labs and universities are reviewing contingency plans
for worst-case scenarios while hoping …

In the face of recent comments by lawmakers and others in
the public eye suggesting that accepting scientific evidence is akin to the
decision to believe in a particular religion or political dogma, NPR
commentator Adam Frank has suggested a clarifying solution.
Congress, he said in a Cosmos & Culture post on 11 December, should consider making a pledge to science -- not to wholesale
acceptance of all published research, but simply to “uphold the integrity of basic
scientific research and take no actions to undermine the broadest public
education in empirically verifiable scientific truths."
﻿

His underlying point that science and technology are “the engines of our
economic competitiveness” echoes the words of leaders of 120 science,
engineering, and STEM education organizations in a letter last week to Congress
and President Obama urging them to avoid the “fiscal cliff” deadline. If
policymakers are unable to work out a solution by the end of the year, blunt
budget cuts wil…

Sir Patrick Moore, who introduced generations to the wonders
of astronomy through his BBC TV show “The Sky at Night,” died 9 December.
According to news reports, Moore was the longest-running host of the same
television show ever. “The Sky at Night” began its run in April 1957. Moore appeared
on its most recent episode, which aired last week, on 3 December.

﻿﻿
"He counted himself as a writer and broadcaster first and
foremost. But as Britain's most recognisable scientist for more than 50 years,
he inspired countless people to take up astronomy as a hobby or astrophysics as
a career,” said colleague Chris Lintott in a tribute published on the BBCwebsite.
Among those many who Moore inspired is Nobel Laureate John Mather, Senior Project Scientist and chair of the Science Working Group for the James Webb Space Telescope and a Fellow of SPIE. Remembering Moore this week, he spoke of his enjoyment of Moore's writings, from childhood on.

The manipulation of light is a core photonics activity performed in numerous ways for numerous practical effects. For example, consider the design of lasers for purposes as diverse as repairing a retina to restore vision and downloading a movie over the internet onto a tablet for viewing.
Amazing as those human-scale applications are, imagine manipulating multiple colors of light on a structure about 100 times smaller than the width of a human hair -- and then applying that for the very practical effects of sensing toxins, improving solar cell efficiency, enabling optical circuits for tele- and data communications, and improving flat-screen display.
A team of researchers led by Anatoly Zayats in the Biophysics and Nanotechnology Group at King’s College London reported recently in Nature’s Scientific Reports that they had demonstrated how to separate and even rearrange a spectrum of colors and create artificial “rainbows” using nanoscale structures on a metal surface.
The researchers …

After droughts, floods, and a “superstorm” this year,
people everywhere are talking about the weather. Some people taking the
long-term view are urging us all to not only talk but to think much more deeply
-- and even to do something -- about climate change.
﻿
"Something
extraordinary is going on in the world,” noted New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas
Kristof as Hurricane Sandy began to dissipate. In a column headlined, “Will climate get some respect now?” Kristof recalled the amazement of Eskimos in
Alaska toward the changes they were seeing: "from melting permafrost to robins (for
which their Inupiat language has no word), and even a (shivering) porcupine."
Across the Atlantic, Fiona
Harvey wrote last week in The
Guardian under the headline “Climate change 'likely to be more severe than some models predict'” that
the latest climate models predict higher temperature rises along with more
extreme weather. In other words, expect more droughts such as the UK…

Experts in STEM education (science, technology,
education, and mathematics) point out that in teaching, the “how” of science is
more important that the “what.” As Shannon Warren, director of a science
education partnership grant program in Washington State, noted
in a recent magazine feature, learning science means exploring and
analyzing, not just memorizing facts and listening to lectures.
The “why” is an equally key question, and one that evokes
very personalized responses.
Take Jin Kang’s story, for example. Twenty years ago, Kang
was an undergraduate physics student discovering that while he found the theory
behind optics and photonics interesting, what he really loved was building
lasers and other optical devices.
Kang is now a professor and the chair of the Electrical
and Computer Engineering Department at Johns Hopkins University. He conducts
research in biophotonics, fiber optics, and optoelectronic devices for
applications in medicine and communications.
One of his primary …

"Light is at the origin of all of life," proponents of the declaration of 2015 as the International Year of Light (IYOL) told the UNESCO Executive Board last week.

The board agreed at its meeting in Paris, giving its enthusiastic support to an
international effort to recognize optics and photonics technologies through a year-long observance in 2015.
Although
a final declaration by the UN General Assembly is not quite a done deal, the
UNESCO support paves the way for a large-scale effort to raise awareness of the
essential role light-based technologies play in driving industry and enhancing
life.
Why is awareness so important?.
"The science and technology of light have
revolutionized medicine, have opened up international communication via the
Internet, and are central to linking cultural, economic and political aspects
of global society," SPIE Fellow Paul Buah-Bassuah of Ghana’s Laser and
Fibre Optics Centre at University of Cape Coast told the UNESCO board. Repr…

﻿
Sitting in a conference room, listening to Roger Angel (REhnu and College of Optical Sciences, University of Arizona) talk about how he
is refocusing astronomicalinstrumentation to build highly efficient, cheaper
solar cells, or watching Eva-Marie Sevick-Muraca (University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston) show the first-ever video of lymphatic flow inside a human being, or hearing Mario Paniccia (Intel) talk about the
amazing advances in computing speed that are around the corner in silicon photonics … well, politics is perhaps not the first thing that comes to mind.
But politics definitely does come to mind at some point, and most
scientists recognize the importance of the relationship between the two
spheres. Today’s endorsement by 68 Nobel Prize winners in science of the
candidacy of President Barack Obama for re-election is one illustration.
﻿

You can read what they said about their endorsement in a story in the NewYork Times. Cut science first?

It's estimated that three billion people — more than 40% of the world’s population — use
wood, coal, charcoal, and other matter for cooking and heating and that 1.5
billion people lack access to electricity.

The human, social, economic,
and environmental costs of this inequity are tremendous because energy is fundamental to health, safety, comfort, and progress for all
seven billion people on Planet Earth.

Yet access to energy varies widely
depending on whether people live in a wealthy or a poor country.

But more attention is being paid to this growing problem.

As Steve Eglash (Stanford University Energy and Environment Affiliates Program) and Kara Fisher (Duke University) write in the October issue of SPIE Professional, the optics and photonics community are finding sustainable ways to generate, convert, store, and
use energy without destroying the
planet.

The importance of sustainable energy was reinforced when the United Nations declared 2012 as the International Year o…

Yes, this excerpt from a study on gender bias in science is from this
year, 2012:
“Despite
efforts to recruit and retain more women, a stark gender disparity persists
within academic science."
The recent study from Yale University involving several institutions investigated gender bias on the part of faculty in biology,
chemistry, and physics, and found that male and
female faculty were just as likely to: judge a female student to be less competent and less worthy of being hired than an identical male studentoffer her a smaller starting salary and less career mentoringappear to be affected by “enduring cultural stereotypes about women’s lack of science competence” that translate into biases in student evaluation and mentoringand yet … report liking the female more than the male student.
“I think we were all just
a little bit surprised at how powerful the results were -- that not only do the
faculty express these biases quite clearly, but the significance and strength
of the resul…

Photonics enjoyed the spotlight in Washington, D.C., last week
First, on Wednesday morning leaders from the optics and photonics community
give an enthusiastic launch to the new National Research Council report “Optics and Photonics, Essential Technologies for Our Nation,” aided by
Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and former Intel CEO Craig Barrett.
Chu and Barrett were featured speakers at a briefing for agency leaders.
Their remarks included references to several important benefits enabled by
photonics:
economic strength
sustainable energy sources
new methods for medical detection and treatment of diseases and chronic conditions
more efficient lighting, computing, manufacturing, automobiles, and very much more.
Wednesday afternoon, the House R&D caucus heard from leaders
of four societies in the sector about the report’s findings on economic impacts
of optics and photonics, the importance of improved STEM education, and the
committee’s recommendations on particular technology di…

A clear and present interest in using optical sciences and
photonics to better our world shone through (no pun intended) at the Photonics
for a Better World pavilion and other activities at SPIE Optics and Photonics last month in San Diego. Organizations are
making dedicated efforts to improve the future of photonics, increase awareness
in science education and improve the global community, and even to teach us how
to have fun with photonics! The other Olympics: Optics Outreach!

Nearly
220 people attended the Optics Outreach Olympics on Sunday 5 August. Teams from
16 Student Chapters from 9 different countries competed against each other by
presenting their best optics outreach demonstrations that they use to teach
children at schools about optics. The goal was to showcase effective, original
educational activities that promote science education. In 2011, SPIE Student
Members promoted science outreach to over 9,000 young students.
This
year, the winning demonstrations included “The Ma…

Authored by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, the Photonics for a Better World blog focuses on research news and the many ways technologies are applied to advance science and improve quality of life, and on the people who make that happen.